I doubted this, though I should have considered it most unfair to Arthur to say so: but there was a quiet obstinacy about him which might raise him at times even to the height of standing up against Annabel. Fortunately, however, she had never found it out and I should have been the last to enlighten her.
"Of course," she continued, "cathedrals and daily services and things like that are apt to lure men into ritualism: I only hope Mr. Blathwayte will have the strength of mind to resist them: and you must be very careful, Reggie, in selecting a new rector not to get any one with leanings that way. I could never allow anything ritualistic in our Church."
I wondered she didn't say "my Church," and have done with it: but I hadn't the heart to chaff her as I used to do in those happy bygone days, ages ago, before ever the Wildacres came to Restham: so I let it pass.
"I expect I shall put the matter into the Bishop's hands," I said: "I don't feel competent to select a spiritual pastor for Restham or anywhere else."
"You selected Mr. Blathwayte, and he has been a great success. It is a pity to get into the habit of thinking you can't do anything, Reggie, because you really do some things extremely well."
"But not the things I care about," I added bitterly, "And in this case I haven't another Arthur up my sleeve."
"The Bishop may have one," suggested Annabel encouragingly.
"Probably. He certainly has more room up his sleeve than I have. I wonder if that was the origin of Bishops having such large sleeves—because they had always got something up them."
Annabel was as literal as ever. "I don't think so, Reggie; I really don't know the origin of Bishops having those full sleeves. I know when it was the fashion for ladies to have large sleeves they were called 'Bishops' sleeves' after the Bishops; but why the Bishops originally had them I haven't a notion. I must try to find out. It is so interesting and instructive to learn the reason and the origin of things like that. But Deans don't have large sleeves, do they?" she added, her wandering thoughts turning once more Arthurwards.
"No; but they have beautiful arrangements about the legs—aprons and breeches and gaiters, and goodness knows what! They are Bishops below the waist and men above it, like the Centaurs, don't you know?"
"But the Centaurs were half horses—not half Bishops, Reggie."
"I know: but the principle is the same."
"And not big sleeves, you are sure?"
"Quite. Deans do not burn the candles at both ends, so to speak, as Bishops do: they are content to take care of the legs, and leave the arms to take care of themselves."
Annabel smiled the tolerant smile of elder-sisterhood. "How funny you are, Reggie! It is nice to hear you making jokes again."
And she went out of the room happy in the conviction that I was what she would have called, "getting over it."
Arthur came over to the Manor in the afternoon, and confirmed what Annabel had said. He had indeed been offered the Deanery of Lowchester: but had not yet decided, as Annabel had, that he should accept it. I was amazed at his hesitancy, considering what a splendid offer it was for a man still comparatively young, and also—as Annabel had pointed out—what a grand scope it would give him for his hitherto wasted powers of organisation: but slowly the reason for this hesitancy dawned upon me.
"To put it in plain English, old man," I said, after we had discussed the question in all its bearings, and light was beginning to penetrate the mists of my confusion, "the only reason you really have against accepting this offer isme."
Arthur blushed: a rare indulgence with him. "Well, I don't know that I should put it as bluntly as that, Reggie——" he began in his deliberate way.
I interrupted him. "ButIshould. It is always best to put things in the bluntest way possible, and to look at them as they really are. I learnt that from Fay. She taught me to have a horror of everything that she designated by the inclusive term 'flapdoodle.'"
I made a point of bringing my wife's name into a conversation now and again: it seemed somehow to narrow the gulf between us. Nobody, except Ponty, ever voluntarily mentioned Fay's name to me (and perhaps that was the reason why I still found a certain amount of comfort in Ponty's society, and why I allowed my old nurse to take such egregious liberties with me): so that unless I spoke sometimes of my lost darling, she would have been altogether put away out of remembrance.
In the same way I have always hated the custom which obtains amongst many people, of never speaking at all of those who have "crossed the flood," or else of speaking of them in an entirely unnatural tone of voice, and making use of such prefixes as "dear" or "poor." Such a custom, to my mind, gives the indirect lie to all Christian teaching as to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, and is only fit for those who sorrow without hope. I maintain that those whom we falsely call our dead should be spoken of as naturally and as frequently as those whom we—making a distinction without a difference—choose to call our living. It always irritates me when Annabel says "dear Papa" and "poor Mamma": she would never have dreamed of using either adjective in the days when our parents were still with us at Restham: and to do it now creates a sort of artificial atmosphere about them, which I, for one, resent.
"I dare say it is awfully vain and presumptuous on my part," Arthur continued, "to think that my coming or going would make much difference to you: but if I was any comfort to you at all, I should hate to take it away from you just when you have had and are having such a rough time."
I was touched by Arthur's unselfishness: and also remorseful at the realisation of what little difference his or anybody else's coming or going made to me now.
I put my hand on his arm, as we sat smoking by the library fire. "You mustn't get that notion into your head, old man: it would make me ever so much more miserable than I am at present if I felt I had in any way hindered your career. It is always bad policy to throw good money after bad; and I am bad money and you are good, as far as economic currency is concerned. Don't think me ungrateful for all you have done for me, because I am not."
"Rubbish!" growled Arthur. "I've done nothing for you at all."
"Yes, you have: you've been as true a friend to me as man ever had. You've done a lot for me during the beastly time I've gone through."
"Then let me stay on here, and go on doing a lot for you. I ask for nothing better."
Then I felt it was time to be brutal and to speak the unvarnished truth. "You've done all you can for me, old man: I hate to say it, but it's the truth. If you stayed on here, you won't do me any more good, and you'd have spoilt your career for nothing. You did help me at first, I admit, and I shall be always grateful for it. But to be perfectly candid with you—though I hate candour, mind you, and would never employ such a painful weapon unless I felt it to be absolutely necessary—neither you nor anybody else can help me now."
"Except Fay," suggested Arthur, hardly above a whisper, as if he were referring to some one who had been buried for years.
I shook my head. "I doubt if even she could help me now. Even if she came back—which she never will—things could never be the same between us as they used to be. I haven't forgiven her—I cannot forgive her—and I couldn't live with her and be at enmity with her at the same time. Life would be unendurable in such circumstances."
Arthur smoked in silence for some minutes: then he said: "Is that why you have never come to Holy Communion now?"
"Yes. I cannot say that I am in love and charity with my neighbours as long as I haven't forgiven Fay and Frank. But I haven't; and I don't feel as if I ever could; and I cannot take the Blessed Sacrament until I do. That is another thing I owe to Frank," I added bitterly; "he has cut me off from the means of grace as well as from the hope of glory. For the more I think of it the more I am convinced that it was entirely his doing that Fay left me."
Again Arthur smoked for some time in silence, and then he said: "I think you are right, Reggie: you are beyond my help altogether, and if I stayed on here I shouldn't do you any good."
"I am past all human help," I replied.
"Yes, I think you are," said Arthur in his slow way; "but human help doesn't count for much after all. There's plenty of the Other Sort left—more than you or anybody else can ever need."
"Not for me: I have forfeited my claim to it," I groaned in the anguish of my heart, as I remembered how I had cried in vain by old Parkins's sick bed for the Help That never came.
Arthur did not speak, but he smiled the smile that I used to see on my mother's face when I was a little boy, and on Fay's in the days when I was pretending that I didn't love her—a smile which said as plainly as if it had been put into words: "You don't know what you are talking about," but said it with a tenderness that it was beyond the power of any words to express.
I think the ruler of the synagogue must have seen that same Smile—intensified a thousandfold—when his servants met him and said: "Thy daughter is dead: why trouble thou the Master any further": and the Answer came: "Be not afraid: only believe."
So Arthur Blathwayte was made Dean of Lowchester, and at once began his preparations for vacating Restham Rectory; while his promotion gradually subsided from a nine days' wonder into an ordinary and commonplace event.
But there was still a greater surprise in store for me and for Restham.
Annabel came into the library one morning with the ominous words: "I've got something to say to you, Reggie."
I looked up from the letter I was writing, and wondered indifferently what fresh vexation was in store. Nothing had any longer the power to vex me very much: but I could guess from Annabel's expression that something was coming which would vex me as much as it was able.
"Well, what is it?" I asked.
Annabel remained standing opposite to me on the other side of the writing-table.
"I expect it will surprise you a good deal, Reggie."
"Well, out with it. Has Blathwayte been offered another Deanery, or has the cook given notice? And don't you think you'd better sit down?"
Annabel sat down on the most uncomfortable chair within reach. "Mr. Blathwayte has asked me to marry him, and I've accepted," she blurted out.
She was right. It did surprise me more than I had thought I could ever be surprised again. It fairly took my breath away.
"Good Heavens, Annabel!" I gasped, when my breath returned to me. "This is astounding news indeed."
The murder being out, Annabel was herself again, and went on explaining with her accustomed volubility: "I was surprised myself, Reggie, when Arthur (I shall call him Arthur now) proposed to me, as I had given up the idea of marrying years ago. Just at first the notion seemed to me ridiculous. But after I'd thought it over for a bit, I saw how necessary it was for anybody as important as a Dean to have a wife at his elbow to tell him what to do, and what not to do. It didn't matter while he was only Rector of a small village like this, though even here he rarely acted without my advice: but I don't see how he could possibly manage to be Dean of Lowchester all by himself, do you?"
I admitted the difficulties of undertaking such a situation single-handed, and my sister continued: "Although I have the greatest respect—I think I may say the deepest affection—for Mr. Bl——Arthur (I find it a little difficult to remember to say Arthur at present, but I shall soon get into the way), I cannot blind my eyes to the fact that he is inclined to have ritualistic tendencies, and a cathedral, I consider, is just the place to encourage that sort of thing, what with the anthems and daily services, and goodness knows what! So different from the quiet routine of a mere parish church. But, you see, if I was there, he couldn't give himself over altogether to ritualism."
I did see that—clearly—in spite of my dazed condition.
"I should be dreadfully vexed," Annabel went on, as I was still more or less speechless with amazement, "if after having got such a splendid appointment, Mr. Blathwayte, I mean Arthur, spoilt it all by ritualism or any folly of that kind. It would be such a dreadful pity! I have often noticed that people wait for a thing for years, and then when they get it at last, they do something that makes you wish they had never had it at all. And I should blame myself if Arthur did anything of that kind."
I winced. I had waited for forty-three years for the happiness that comes to most men in their twenties, and then somebody had done something that made me wish I had never had it at all: but I was as yet far from seeing that that somebody was myself.
"And then, of course," continued Annabel, with a change in her voice, "there is you."
"Yes, there is me," I replied grimly. I wondered how Annabel was going to explain me away.
"At first I felt I really couldn't leave you—especially now you are quite alone; and that I must refuse Mr. Blath—Arthur, in consequence. But on thinking the matter over and looking at it sensibly, I remembered that a man must leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, which of course includes a woman and her brother. And, when all's said and done, you married, so why shouldn't I?"
By this time I had recovered my speech, and also my better feelings. At the first shock the idea of Annabel's marriage was revolting to me: I do not attempt to deny it: and the thought of her leaving me seemed Fate's final blow. But as I pulled myself together I realised that the selfishness of sorrow was swallowing me up, and I determined to escape from it before it was too late.
Much is said on behalf of the sweetening uses of adversity; but, for my part, when people talk about the discipline of suffering, I always want to substitute the word "temptation" for "discipline," as I know few greater temptations to selfishness than bodily sickness and mental anguish. I cannot believe that either sickness or sorrow in itself makes men better: but if men grow better in spite of sickness and sorrow, then they are conquerors indeed. When we are told that the Captain of our Salvation was made "perfect through suffering," I do not think it is a proof of the beauty of suffering, but of the Divinity of Christ. Even that crowning temptation was powerless to hurt Him. And if He could be perfect in spite of the things He suffered, so can we, provided that we abide in Him and He in us.
But I was not abiding in Him just then. I had gone out into the far country, because the one restriction of the Father's House was too hard for me: that restriction which I had persistently set aside: "If ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
Still there was enough Grace left in me to enable me to struggle, however vainly, against the wave of selfishness which was overwhelming my tortured soul, and I struggled. "You are quite right, Annabel, in saying and thinking that you have as much right to marry as I had; and it would be abominable selfishness on my part to say a word to dissuade you from any course which tended to your happiness."
Here Annabel's sense of justice interrupted me. "Still, Reggie, I did say no end of words to try to dissuade you: there's no shutting your eyes to that fact; and therefore you have a perfect right to say anything you like to dissuade me. But I think I can honestly say that when I tried to prevent you from marrying Fay, I was thinking of your happiness rather than of my own."
"I'd take my oath on that," I said warmly.
"And of course I'd no idea that things would turn out as they have," Annabel continued, "or else I should have tried to dissuade you much more strongly than I did. It would have been my duty to do so. Just as it would be your duty to do anything you could to prevent me from marrying Mr. Blath—Arthur, if you thought there was any probability of his running off to Australia and going on to the stage."
I was again able to take my oath that I apprehended no such dangers. "But do you love him?" I added. "That is the main thing."
"Well, I should hardly like to apply such a term as 'love' to the feelings of a woman of my age, but I must admit that I am sincerely attached to Arthur, and have the greatest respect for his character. And I must also admit that the lot he asks me to share presents the greatest attractions to me. I don't wish to appear conceited, but I do think that I am rather wasted on a small place like this, just as Arthur is. I mean there is more work in me than Restham requires."
"You mean that, like Mrs. Figshaw's daughter, you also want a 'scoop'?"
"Ascope, Reggie: that is what I do mean. I love arranging things, and I've arranged and planned and organised here till there's nothing left to plan or arrange or organise. And we shan't be far off—only about an hour's ride in the car; so that you can always come over and consult me about anything, and I can come over here constantly and keep my eye on your servants. I really don't see that with me within an hour's motor-ride they can go very far wrong."
"Nor do I. Moreover, Ponty's eye is almost as all-seeing as yours."
"Of course," added Annabel thoughtfully, "Mr. Blathwayte, I mean Arthur, is five years younger than I am: but if he doesn't mind that, I don't see why you should."
"I don't," I hastened to assure her: "that is nobody's business but his and yours. And the experience of life has taught me that there are distinct disadvantages to a woman in having a husband older than herself. But, Annabel," I added, getting up from my seat and going across to where she sat and laying my hand on her shoulder, "although I am naturally surprised at what you have told me, and am very sorry to lose you, I am very glad as well: for I am sure it would be impossible for any woman to have a better husband than old Arthur. I hope you will be very happy, and, what is more, I am sure you will."
"Thank you, Reggie: and as for leaving you I feel I can do it more easily now than I could before you were married. I'm nothing like so necessary to you now as I was then."
I hastened to disclaim this accusation; but underneath my disclaimer I was haunted by a lurking consciousness that Annabel's common sense had, as usual, hit the mark. She was not as necessary to my happiness as she had been before my marriage: nobody was, except Fay, and I feared that she was lost to me for ever.
I cannot deny that Annabel's engagement was a tremendous surprise to me: but as I became accustomed to the surprise, I was shocked to find hidden beneath it an unholy little mixture of relief. I hated myself for the knowledge, and violently battled against it, but all the same I could not help knowing that Restham Manor without Annabel would be a much more easy and restful abode than it had ever been before. And at the very back of my mind—so far back that I was scarcely conscious of it—there sprang up a tiny and indefinite hope that—with Annabel gone—Fay might come back to me once more. But not with Frank: even though it might be possible for me sometime to forgive my wife, it could never be possible for me to forgive her brother: of that I felt certain: He had injured me far too deeply. But though the possibility of Fay's return crept into the realm of practical politics, I was too proud to ask her to come back to me. She had left me of her own free will, and she should come back to me of her own free will or not at all. And this was not entirely selfish pride on my part, though doubtless to a great extent it was. Much as I loved my wife, much as I longed for her, I did not wish her to return until she felt she could be happy with me. Once again—as before I proposed to her—I was not willing to purchase my own happiness at the cost of Fay's.
Of course the marriage of Annabel to Blathwayte was a nine days' wonder in Restham—a wonder which I shared with my humbler neighbours. However devoted to his sisters a man may be, the fact that other men want to marry them never fails to appeal to his sense of humour: and the appeal is by no means minimised if the sister happens to have attained to her fiftieth year. In spite of all the sorrow through which I had passed and was still passing, I was still sufficiently a boy at heart to laugh at the idea of good old Arthur's marrying Annabel.
I did not—I could not—believe that the attachment dated from Blathwayte's youthful days, since the difference between twenty-five and thirty is much greater than that between forty-four and forty-nine. My explanation of the phenomenon was that he was suddenly faced with the prospect of doing without Annabel, and found he couldn't stand it; and so—necessity being the mother of invention—it occurred to him to marry her instead. I think she had become as much an integral part of his scheme of things as the sun or the moon or the General Post Office; and although one might not spontaneously think of marrying the sun or the moon or the General Post Office, it is conceivable that one might even go to that length rather than do without them altogether.
But so inconsistent is human nature, although my higher self struggled against any selfish desire to keep Annabel at Restham, and my lower self was secretly relieved at the prospect of her departure, I was nevertheless hurt that she should wish to leave me. Once again I was brought face to face with the old problem, how is it that the people always behave so much better to other people than other people ever behave to them? To which I believe the real answer is that we all expect so much more of each other than we are prepared to give in return.
My unholy relief at the transference of Annabel's beneficent yoke from my shoulders to Arthur's was shared to the fullest extent by Ponty, and in her case it assumed no secret or surreptitious form.
"It'll be a good thing for Miss Annabel to have a house and a husband of her own at last," she remarked, "to order about as she pleases; and leave you and me to do what we like at the Manor, Master Reggie."
"But you seem to forget that she is taking a vow of obedience to her husband," I suggested, "which she certainly never took with regard to you and me."
Ponty shook her old head. "Vows or no vows, Miss Annabel will always wear the breeches."
"Which in this case happens to be gaiters as well," I added: "but I've no doubt that she will wear them all, with the apron thrown in."
"I shan't so much mind Miss Annabel having everything her own way at the Deanery, Master Reggie, because when all's said and done it's the course of nature for a woman to rule her own husband; but no woman was ever intended to rule her brother, and particularly her brother's wife, and it's against nature that she should. And what's against nature always ends in trouble sooner or later, mark my words! There was a man at Poppenhall when I was a girl who suddenly took it into his head to leave off eating meat, and lived instead upon nuts. He said there was a lot of nourishment in a nut, which it stands to reason there couldn't be, it all being made of what you might call wood, and indigestible at that. But anyway, he hadn't lived on nuts for more than a year when he, fell off a rick he was thatching and broke his neck. Which was nothing but a judgment upon him for going against nature. And for months before he died, you could hear the nuts rattling inside him, like a baby's rattle."
"A terrible fate!" I said gravely. "But I may add for your comfort that if it is natural, as you say, for every woman to rule her own husband, there is no fear of Miss Annabel's going against nature: and I am sure that the Dean will make her an excellent husband."
"None better: he's one in a thousand is Mr. Blathwayte, and always has been. And Miss Annabel won't make a bad wife either, for them as like those masterful, managing sort of wives. She'll always have her house kept beautiful; and she'll be Dean of Lowchester and Chapter too, if they don't take care."
"But she'll be a very good Dean and Chapter, Ponty."
"Yes, Master Reggie, you have the right of it there. Whatever Miss Annabel sets herself to do, she'll do well: no manner of doubt on that point. She's always from a child been one to do her duty: I will say that for her. It's only when she sets about doing other people's duty that she begins to get troublesome."
"The Dean and Chapter may possibly find it troublesome when she begins to do their duty," I suggested.
"That's their business and not mine, Master Reggie. Miss Annabel has been my business for close on fifty years, and I'm glad to hand her on to somebody else. Not that I'm not fond of her, for I am, and have been ever since I took her on from the monthly nurse forty-nine years ago: but she was a handful from a baby, though always a fine child, with a skin as fair as a lily, and hair that curled quite easy and kept in curl, though I can't pretend as it ever curled natural, because it didn't. But I'd no trouble in curling it as some folks have. I remember a woman at Poppenhall, whose children's hair was as straight as never was, though she put it in curling-papers every night of their lives, feeling she didn't like to be bested by her own children's hair, as you might say. But instead of taking the curl any better, it all came off, the curling-papers having stopped the natural growth; and those children's heads were as bare as billiard-balls. I suppose it was a judgment on her for going against nature."
"But you went against nature in curling Miss Annabel's hair, and yet no judgment seems to have fallen upon you," said I, as I thought pertinently.
"That was quite different, Master Reggie." Like the rest of her kind, Ponty recognised the incalculable difference between her own case and the case of everybody else. "Although Miss Annabel's hair didn't curl what you might call naturally, like yours, it was very easy to curl, and it kept in something beautiful: and it seemed very hard for your poor mamma to have a boy whose curls had to be cut off and a girl who hadn't any. And then her ladyship's children were her ladyship's children, and not like ordinary common folk." Ponty's logic always roused my wonder and admiration.
While she was speaking, my wandering gaze fell upon two portraits hung on the nursery wall: a fat little girl with pink cheeks and blue eyes, and stiff curls like great yellow sausages, who was dressed in a white frock and a blue sash; and a thin, little, dark-eyed boy with pale cheeks and terrible brown ringlets, and who was disfigured still further by a green velvet suit and a ghastly lace collar. These caricatures were supposed to reproduce Annabel and myself in early youth; and in Ponty's eyes they represented the perfection of personal beauty as depicted by the highest form of human art.
But while I smiled—as I had often smiled before—at the hideousness of these pictures, a great wave of envy of the children whom they represented swept over me; an overwhelming longing to be once more the sheltered little boy in the frightful green suit, whose world was Annabel and whose Heaven was Ponty and his mother. Happy little boy, upon whose wrath the sun never went down, and who knew no sorrow so great that his mother could not cure it! I would gladly have changed places with him, even though the change involved the handicaps of long brown curls and a large lace collar.
Arthur and Annabel were married very quietly at Restham Church; and, after a short honeymoon, took up their abode at The Deanery of Lowchester—a beautiful old house which fulfilled my sister's most exorbitant dreams.
I did not appoint Arthur's successor: I felt I was too much out of touch with things spiritual to be competent to undertake so solemn a responsibility: so I gave the matter over into the Bishop's hands, and left the selection of a new rector to him.
With the simplicity which has always characterised my views regarding that other world which is known to us as the Kingdom of Heaven, I accepted the fact that as long as Frank Wildacre was unforgiven by me I had no right to expect help from on High in any of my undertakings. How could I claim the rights of citizenship if I did not conform to the rules of citizenship? The rule was there in black and white for everybody to read: "If ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." And how could I ask my Father in Heaven to fulfil His part of the contract, unless I were ready to fulfil mine?
And I was not ready: I was no readier than I had been when Frank Wildacre stole my wife away from me a year and a half ago. My anger against him was hotter and bitterer than it had ever been: time seemed to increase rather than to diminish its intensity. I advisedly say Frank, as my heart was gradually softening towards my darling. I still was set against making the first advances: but I felt that if she would only come back to me of her own free will, I was prepared to let bygones be bygones, and to take up the thread of our married life again exactly where she had broken it off. At least that is how I felt sometimes: at others I was plunged in despair by the thought that everything was over for ever between Fay and myself, and that I should never see her dear face again. But even in my more hopeful moods I recognised that it would be impossible for Fay and Annabel to live together again; and that it was, therefore, a good thing on the whole that Arthur had transplanted my sister from Restham to Lowchester.
But although I was sometimes ungracious enough to feel relieved by the removal of Annabel's restraining presence, there were times when my loneliness and desolation seemed almost more than I could bear. Though in one way I could not miss Fay more than I had done for the past eighteen months, in another way the absence of any feminine influence in the house seemed to emphasise her absence as it had never been emphasised before. As long as Annabel was still there, I only, so to speak, missed my wife personally: but after Annabel had gone away I missed Fay officially as well. I had always missed her in the spirit, but now I also missed her in the letter: and my active yearning for her was supplemented by a passive need. And underneath all my emotions—underneath even my love and longing for Fay—there was ever with me the consciousness of that condition which was known as "excommunication" in the Mediæval Church and as "conviction of sin" in the Evangelical Revival. I was not beyond reach of the love of God—no one could be that: but I was outside the pale of what old-fashioned theologists could call "His covenanted mercies." I did not think of myself as a lost soul: that expression was robbed of all meaning for me after I once realised with my heart as well as with my head Who it was That came to seek and to save that which was lost: but I knew that I was in the plight of that servant who, though His Lord forgave him his debt, failed to extend the like clemency to his fellow-servant, and so was cast into prison and not allowed to come thence until he should have paid the uttermost farthing. To use the beautiful language of our forefathers, I was no longer at peace with God.
This to me was the most terrible part of my sorrow. Fay's going had taken all the sunshine out of life: but this took away even the security of death. There seemed no hope for me anywhere.
I knew perfectly well that I myself was my own Hell: that it was nothing but my attitude towards Frank that consigned me to this outer darkness. Yet—knowing this—I could not bring myself to condone the wrong which he had done me. It was not that I wouldn't forgive him: I would willingly have pardoned him if I could; at least, so I thought at the time, and so I think still, but one can never quite trust the deceitfulness of the human heart. Whether Iwouldnot, or whether Icouldnot forgive Frank Wildacre, God only knoweth; but anyway Ididnot forgive him: and consequently my soul went out into the wilderness to perish alone like the scapegoat of old, and my spiritual wretchedness assumed proportions beyond the description of any form of words.
It was in the spring after Annabel's marriage that I received the following letter from Lady Chayford—
"MY DEAR REGGIE,
"As the number of one's years grows more, and the number of one's friends correspondingly less, one feels compelled to grapple the residue to one's heart with hoops of steel. Therefore please come to us for a week-end and be grappled.
"Besides, we want to show you this great Babylon that we have built, and wherein we are now abiding. It is such a comfort to be securely planted in a country home of one's own, after having been potted-out for years in furnished houses; and the facts that our particular Babylon is not at all great, and that its hot-water supply leaves much to be desired in the way of heat, in no way imperil our fundamental happiness in the creation of our own hands. And the garden is lovely, although we cannot live in it entirely until it has been thoroughly aired, as both Paul and I have been indulging in those Entreat-me-not-to-leave-thee sort of colds which are so prevalent just now. Therefore so far we can only take walking exercise under our own vine and fig-tree: it is too cold to sit under them at present.
"I send you a selection of all the week-ends between now and Easter to choose from.
"Always your friend,"ISABEL CHAYFORD.
Isabel's letter was kind, like herself; and it was kind of her to take pity on a lonely and desolate man like me: but all the same, I did not avail myself of her kindness.
I knew that it would be indeed a sort of comfort to tell her all my troubles, and to ask for her opinion the tragedy of my life, and she was the only person to whom I felt I could speak freely about the blow which had fallen on me. I believe that a truly manly man locks up all his sorrows in his own breast, and throws the key into the dust-bin of dead memories. But I have never been the sort of manly creature that female novelists delight to honour. There is a great strain of woman in me, and always has been: and not the most heroic sort of woman, either.
But though I longed for the consolation and counsel of Isabel, I felt that in my present morbid condition I could not stand the principles and politics of Paul. In the old days I had put up with Paul on account of Isabel: now I gave up Isabel on account of Paul. The difference was merely chronological. When we are young, the pleasure of anything always swallows up the attendant pain: as we grow older, the attendant pain swallows up any possible pleasure. And that is life.
So I refused Lady Chayford's kind invitation.
But the woman who had once been Isabel Carnaby was not the woman to be put off by a mere refusal. So she invited herself to motor over and have lunch with me instead: and she never even suggested to bring his lordship with her.
She was one of those rare people—and most especially rare women—who could put herself in another person's place: and though at one time she had wanted Paul Seaton dreadfully—wanted him more than anything in the world—she was still capable of knowing that at another time I might not want him at all. And she acted upon this knowledge.
She arrived just in time for luncheon, and of course we could talk of only surface matters as long as the servants were coming in and out of the room. But it was a comfort to hear her talk, even of only surface matters, and to feel her feminine presence in the house.
Of course Annabel often came over to see me, and to have what she called her eye upon my establishment: in fact, she seemed to keep one eye always at Restham, as some men always keep a change of clothes at their Club; but Annabel's was never a "feminine presence," in the sense that Isabel's and Fay's were. Even the cult of the "Ladies' Needlework Guild," ultra-feminine though the name of the fetish sounds, had never taken away the true gentlemanliness from Annabel. I now always called my sister and her husband "the Dean and the Sub-Dean." They thought that by the "Sub-Dean" I meant Annabel. But I did not.
When lunch was over and we were having coffee in the great hall, Isabel settled herself comfortably on the big Chesterfield by the fire. Unlike most women, she could sit for hours with unoccupied hands. Though her tongue was never idle, her hands often were. To me there had always been something fatiguing in the ceaseless travail of Annabel's fingers. I don't remember ever seeing them at rest, except on a Sunday; and even then they were not unoccupied: they always held some book or other containing sound Evangelical doctrine. But just now Isabel's hands held nothing: and the sight somehow rested me.
"Please begin to smoke at once, Reggie," she said: "I shan't enjoy myself a bit if you don't. I shall get exhausted like people do in Egypt, and places like that, when there is no atmosphere, don't you know?—nothing but black Pyramids and bright yellow sand, till everybody thirsts for a real London fog."
"Won't you?" I asked.
She shook her head where the once dark hair was beginning to turn grey. "No. I'm not really modern, you know: I've advanced as far as motor-cars and the economic position of women and central heating, but I draw the line at smoking and going in flying machines and wearing pyjamas. I'm really almost grandmotherly in some things."
I demurred.
"Yes, I am," she persisted. "If I were modern, I should draw out my own little cigarette-case and offer you an Egyptian or a Virginian, as if I were a slave-driver in the Babylonian marriage market: but as it is, you must consume your own smoke like a manufacturing chimney. As I told you once before, I budded in the 'eighties and blossomed in the 'nineties, and now I'm only fit to be sewn up in lavender-bags and kept in the linen-cupboard. And now, Reggie, tell me all about it."
So I told her, as briefly and truthfully as I could, the whole story of my married life and its culminating tragedy. I told of how doubtful I had been from the beginning of my power to make Fay happy: of my qualms of conscience as to whether at my age I had a right to ask so young a girl to marry me: of how Annabel and Frank—especially Frank—had gradually come between Fay and me: of how I had hated the theatrical entertainments and all that they involved, and yet for Fay's sake had upheld them in the teeth of Annabel's opposition: of how further events had proved that Annabel was right and I was wrong, since the passion for acting—in conjunction with Frank's influence—had finally driven Fay from me: of my increasing anger against Frank and my incapacity to forgive him: of my former gift of healing and of how my enmity towards him had deprived me of this gift: and finally of how this increasing and consuming hatred had driven me into the wilderness, and shut me out from communion with God or man. All this I told without enlargement or restraint. But from one thing I strenuously refrained: I said no word of blame nor uttered a single complaint against my darling. Surely, as her husband, this was the least that I could do. She had weighed me in her balances and found me wanting and rejected me: but she was still my wife, and my loyalty to her was unshaken.
All the time that I was pouring into Isabel's sympathetic ears the feelings that had been pent up in my own breast for two years, she hardly spoke a word: but her blue eyes never left my face, and I felt in every fibre of me that she sympathised and understood.
When I had finished there was a short silence, during which I waited for her verdict, wondering whether she would blame me or Frank or Annabel: or merely insist on the irrevocableness of the marriage-vow; and suggest that I should endeavour—by means of that exploded blunderbuss called marital authority—to compel my wife to come back to me, whether she wished it or whether she did not.
But to my surprise Lady Chayford did none of these things. Her first words were—
"You're up against it now, Reggie: what you've got to do is to forgive Frank Wildacre."
"But I can't," I cried: "it is absolutely impossible."
Isabel nodded her head. "I know that. It was absolutely impossible for the sick and the maimed and the halt to take up their beds and walk: but they did it."
"Frank has entirely spoilt my life: I can never forgive him—never," I pleaded.
"But you'll have to, Reggie: there's no getting away from it and the more impossible it is, the more you'll have to do it. Don't think I'm not sorry for you, or don't understand how hideous it all is, for I am and do: but there's no use in shutting your eyes to the truth. Lots of people would tell you not to bother about Frank at all, but to give your whole attention to Fay and how to get her back again, and they would add that your first duty is to your wife."
"And so it is," I cried.
"No, it isn't, Reggie, and you know it. Your first duty is to God: and if the Bible means anything, it means that if we don't forgive other people we don't get forgiveness ourselves. I don't want to preach at you, goodness knows, or to be priggish or anything of that kind: and I know it sounds awfully antiquated and Victorian to 'be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever,' but, all the same, as you grow older, you learn that it's the only thing that really counts."
I groaned. I knew so well that Isabel was right.
"Of course there have been faults all round—plenty of them," she went on; "and it seems to me that while Annabel and Frank were busy doing that which they ought not to have done, you were equally busy leaving undone that which you ought to have done: but that's neither here nor there. It's no good bothering over the day that's past and over: what we've got to do is to see that to-morrow is an improvement on it: and the job to hand at present is that before you do anything else you've got to forgive Frank Wildacre."
"Damn him!" I exclaimed, getting up from my chair and kicking the logs in the fireplace as if they had been Frank himself.
Isabel smiled sweetly. "That's all very well, Reggie; but you aren't damning him, you see: you're only damning yourself. That's my whole point."
I began to walk up and down the great hall. This was plain speaking indeed.
"I know I'm being very horrid," she went on, "and I don't wonder you detest me. I feel like that man in the Bible—Balaam, wasn't it?—who was invited out to curse somebody and blessed them instead: only it is just the other way round with me. But, all the same, you'll never be happy, and Fay will never be happy, until you forgive Frank. Of course, you've got to forgive Fay too, and you haven't really done that yet: but you soon will when you see her again. I'm not worrying about that. The nut to crack is not Fay but Frank."
And that was all the comfort I got from Isabel Chayford. From the depths of my desolate heart I knew that what Isabel said was true: and equally from the depths of my soul I knew that as long as he lived I could never forgive Frank Wildacre.
Isabel Chayford came over to see me in the early spring, and immediately after Easter, Annabel, Arthur and I went for a short trip to the Canary Isles. Now that she was Dean and Chapter of Lowchester, Annabel had not as much time as formerly to stand between me and the East wind: but she still did what she could; and on this particular occasion hid me in the shelter of the Canary Isles until the tyranny of my traditional enemy was overpast.
Nothing particular happened during the early part of the summer. My longing for Fay and my hatred of Frank were as great as they had ever been: neither feeling seemed to diminish in intensity: and I felt that forgiveness of Frank was as far from me as ever.
I was still very unhappy: but I had now been unhappy for so long that I was fast coming to regard it as my normal state.
I did not see much of the new Rector, though what I did see I liked, and he was most popular in the parish: but I was at war with the King, whose ambassador he was, and I felt that, therefore, his embassage meant nothing to me.
So the long, dreary, sunny days dragged on until the beginning of August: and then suddenly the incredible happened, and the world as we had known it was turned upside down.
It is not for me to attempt to tell the story of the Great War: that is already written in blood and tears on the heart of the civilised world; and likewise on the pages of those books which shall be opened before the Great White Throne, when the earth and the heaven shall flee away and there shall be found no place for them. Germany ruthlessly broke the laws of God and of Man, and England upheld them and defended them even to the death. Hell was let loose with all its furies, but the hosts of Heaven were also in the field.
And whilst on the continent of Europe the awful battle raged between Right and Might, between Righteousness and Unrighteousness, between the Prince of Peace and the Lust of Power, we at home saw our old world tumbling about our ears, and a new one rising phoenix-like from its ashes.
Suddenly the whole scale of values was changed. In the old days before the War, the important people were the middle-aged, wealthy, intellectual people, the brains and backbone of the nation. Now those people had ceased to matter at all. The only people that mattered were the young and the strong and the fearless, the blood and the sinews of the nation. The wisdom of the wise had become a thing of no moment compared with the strength and the courage of the brave. It was the boys that counted now: not the mature man of weight and position. The old standards had passed away and new ones were set up in their place. County magnates and landed proprietors sank into abysmal insignificance beside the village lads in their new khaki: rank and wealth became worthless, except in so far as they could be adapted to serve the soldiers fighting at the front.
The world which had hitherto bowed down before us middle-aged, influential, well-to-do people, simply because we were middle-aged and influential and well-to-do, suddenly found it had no use for us, and so cast us ruthlessly aside. It had heavier work on hand—work that was beyond our over-ripe powers. And the strange thing was that this casting aside did not hurt our pride as it would have done at another time, for the reason that our personal pride was dead, and in its place had come a newer and a better feeling, the sense of a corporate unity. The boys who were preferred before us were no rivals, but part of ourselves, because we were all part of one great and united Empire. For the first time in the memory of living men we knew experimentally what it meant to be members one of another.
At the coming of the Great War old things passed away and all things were made new, and life was suddenly charged with a terrible and yet glorious meaning. Our very prayers were changed. For the first time for a century we comprehended the Litany, and offered it up with understanding hearts. The "hands of our enemies," which had for so long been merely figurative dangers, were now an actual and hideous menace: and because we believed we were fighting not for greed of gain nor for lust of power, but for love of abstract righteousness, we dared to raise from our hearts that solemn and compelling plea: "O Lord, arise, help us and deliver us for Thine honour."
Naturally I passionately wanted to enlist, and equally naturally my age and short-sightedness rendered me unable to respond to my country's need: but for the first time in my life, failure had lost the power to hurt me. What mattered it that I was worthless, if there were younger and better men ready to take my place? The individual unit had ceased to signify.
Time also had changed its values. Everything that had happened before the war was almost lost in the haze of a half-forgotten past: the trifling events of the last week of July seemed as far off as the happenings of my boyhood. A new era had begun on that fateful Fourth of August, nineteen hundred and fourteen.
It was only a few weeks according to the old reckoning of time, though it seemed as if a long stretch of years had elapsed since the setting of the sun of peace, that another crushing blow fell, and I received the following letter from Isabel Chayford—
"My DEAR REGGIE,
"I have terrible news to tell you—the very worst—and trying to break it gently is no good at all. I have seen Frank Wildacre, who has just come over from Belgium with a lot of Belgian refugees and he tells me that Fay is dead—killed by a shell at Louvain."
I put the letter down as I could not see to read any more. A thick red mist was before my eyes, and my brain reeled.
Fay dead—my beautiful, light-hearted little Fay! The thought was unthinkable.
Yet though it was unthinkable, the certainty of it crushed me to the earth. I could not believe—I felt I never could believe—that Fay was dead: yet on the other hand I felt as if she had been dead for years and years, and that I had always known it. Sorrow is always so old. The moment that its shadow touches us we feel that it has enshrouded us for ages.
As long as I live I shall never forget the agony of that moment. The sun shone through the dining-room window as I sat at the breakfast-table, and I hated it for shining. It seemed as if it ought never to shine again now that Fay was dead. And all the familiar objects around me—the furniture and the flowers and the breakfast-things—suddenly became charged with a terrible and sinister meaning, as if they were all part of a grotesque and unspeakably horrible dream.
I sat for what seemed an eternity trying to realise, though in vain, that Fay was dead; and yet feeling that I had realised it, from the foundation of the world, in every fibre of my being.
So it was all over, the joy and the pain of my married life! The breach between Fay and myself could never now be healed. There was now no longer any hope of her coming back to me, and asking me to let bygones be bygones and to begin our life together afresh. The bygones were bygones indeed, and there was no beginning again for my darling and me. Everything was over and past, and there was nothing left—not even a happy memory. She could never again weigh me in her balance, and this time more mercifully; nor could she ever cross out thatTekelshe had written against my name. It must stand for ever to my eternal undoing. The anguish of this thought was almost more than I could bear, and yet live!
And across the intolerable anguish there came another feeling—an intensity of hatred against him who had destroyed the happiness of my life; and who now came back to complete the havoc he had wrought, by the news of my darling's death. If I had found it impossible to forgive Frank while Fay was alive, I found it still more impossible now!
After an eternity of such agony as I trust never to go through again, it occurred to me to finish reading Isabel's letter. There was nothing in it that could matter: nothing could ever matter any more now that Fay was dead: but I felt I might as well read it. I had a dim feeling that Isabel sympathised and was sorry, but I did not care whether she was sorry or not. Neither she nor anybody else could ever help me any more. Still she meant to be kind; and though her kindness was of no use to me, I thought I might as well finish her letter. I owed that much to her. So I went on with the reading of the letter that I had begun to read ages ago, in that dim, far-off past before I knew that Fay was dead.
"It appears," the letter continued, "that Fay and Frank had come over for a trip through Belgium when the war began, as Fay was rather overdone by acting and wanted a thorough rest and change: and instead of trying to get away at once, they stayed on at Louvain in order to help to look after the wounded. During the deliberate destruction of the town, Fay rushed out of cover to save a child that had run into the street by itself; and in so doing was struck by part of a shell, which killed her. So she died to save another, which is the most splendid death of all.
"Frank was so prostrated by the shock that he could no longer help to nurse the wounded, so he got away, and came over to England with a lot of Belgian refugees. I found him among these immediately after his arrival in London, and knew him at once from his strong resemblance to Fay. I brought him home with me to Prince's Gate, as he looked far too fragile and delicate to be left among strangers; and he is here now—an absolute wreck.
"Of course I shall only be too glad for Fay's sake to keep him here and nurse him back to health: but he doesn't want to stay here: he wants to go back to you.
"I have told him how you blame him—and justly so—for all that has happened, and how impossible you find it to forgive him. I haven't spared him at all. But in spite of all that I have said he still persists that he wants to go back to Restham. He is dreadfully sorry for what he has done: but of course that doesn't mend anything.
"Reggie, don't think it is unfeeling of me to bother you about all this now. I need not tell you how deeply I grieve for you in your crushing sorrow, nor how fully I realise that you are beyond the reach of any grief or sympathy of mine. All this you know better than I could tell you. But I feel I must tell you that Frank repents, and that he wants to come back to you from the far country. This may be your one chance of learning how to forgive your enemy: and I dare not stand between any man and his hope of salvation. So I just tell you the facts: and leave results in your hands—and God's.
"Ever yours, in truest sympathy,"ISABEL CHAYFORD."
Yes, Isabel meant well. I was sure of that: though her meaning was of no moment to me. But what she asked was impossible. If I could not forgive Frank when Fay was alive and there was still the chance of things coming right again between my darling and me, how could I forgive him now, when the mischief he had wrought was irremediable, and my life was spoiled beyond redemption?
No: I felt that Isabel, and—I say it in all reverence—even God Himself were asking too much of me.
The forgiveness of Frank Wildacre was a demand too exorbitant to be met by a man who was suffering as I was suffering. I could never forgive him—never: especially now that Fay was dead. And suddenly, through the clouds of my spiritual anguish and across the storms of my passionate rebellion, I seemed to hear a Voice which said: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock!"
But I would not heed it.
I pushed my untasted breakfast away from me and rang the bell. Jeavons answered it, and I heard myself saying to him in a voice that I did not recognise as my own—
"Let all the blinds be pulled down at once. Her ladyship is dead."
Then—before he could utter the commonplace condolences which I felt would kill me—I went along the passage to the library and shut the door: and I sat down at my writing-table and laid my head on my arms and wept like a child. And there was none to comfort me.
Everybody was very kind to me for the next few days, with that combination of fear and pity which we always show towards the newly bereaved, and which sets these apart from their fellows as completely as if they were lepers. Arthur and Annabel came over at once from the Deanery, and vainly endeavoured to console me in their different ways: Annabel by letting me see what a sacrifice she had made on my behalf by leaving Lowchester, even for a day, with all the work—Red Cross and otherwise—which the war had thrown on her hands: and Arthur by saying hardly anything at all, but gazing at me with the eyes of a faithful dog.
And all the time that still small Voice kept sounding in my ears: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock!"
I showed Arthur and Annabel Isabel's letter, and awaited their comments upon it.
Annabel was very indignant with Lady Chayford. "It is just like Isabel to begin bothering you about Frank at a time like this!" she exclaimed: "but she never did have any sense. As if you hadn't trouble enough, poor dear boy, without her trying to thrust Belgian refugees on to your shoulders as well!"
"I could not possibly have Frank here," I said.
"Of course you couldn't," replied my sister: "it would be most upsetting to you, with his likeness to Fay, and the way in which he has treated you, and all! I cannot conceive what induced Isabel Chayford to make such an improper suggestion. But she always was utterly inconsiderate of other people's feelings."
My sense of justice rebelled at this. "I don't think you are quite fair to her there, Annabel. Isabel may be unwise, but she is never inconsiderate."
"Well, at any rate, she used to be," retorted Annabel; "and what people used to be they generally are."
I could not deny the truth of this statement, broadly speaking: and I had not the spirit to point out that there might be exceptions.
"What do you think?" I asked, appealing to Arthur.
He was silent for a moment; then he said in his slow, grave way: "It is very difficult to judge for other people, and I agree with Annabel that had I been in Lady Chayford's place I should never have ventured to make such a daring suggestion. But I cannot help feeling that she is right when she says that it may be your one chance."
"That is just Isabel's nonsense," interpolated Annabel. "I haven't patience with her. As if Frank Wildacre deserved to be forgiven! And even if he did—which he doesn't—it isn't the time to bother poor Reggie about it now."
"I can never forgive him," I repeated.
"I didn't say you could, old man," replied Arthur: "neither does Lady Chayford. She only says that this might be your one opportunity of doing so: not that you could necessarily avail yourself of that opportunity. As I take it, she does not suggest to you to forgive Frank, but to put yourself in a position where it might become possible for you to forgive him. There is a difference between the two, I think."
"I can never forgive him," I repeated doggedly. And we left it at that.
Annabel pressed me to go back to Lowchester with her and Arthur: but I declined to do that, or even to let them remain at Restham with me. I wanted to be alone with my sorrow. And as they had their hands full of all kinds of work connected with the war and could ill be spared from Lowchester, they let me have my way.
I wrote a short note to Isabel Chayford thanking her for her sympathy in my overwhelming sorrow: and saying that I found it impossible to grant Frank's wish and to let him come to Restham. And then I sat alone in my house that was left unto me desolate, and mourned my dead.
But was I alone?
Through the long sunless days and the dreary sleepless nights that Voice kept ringing in my ears—
"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock!"
And I knew that the Hand that knocked was pierced; yet I steeled my soul against that incessant pleading, and kept fast shut the door.
Some æons of agony passed—I think in reality it was three or four days as happy people count them—and Arthur came over to see me again.
We sat chiefly in silence, or else talked about impersonal matters, Arthur looking at me all the time with his dog-like eyes. But just as he was leaving he said—
"Have you thought any more about Lady Chayford's suggestion, old man?"
"I have thought about nothing else."
"Then don't you think you might do as—as—she suggests?" he asked timidly: then: "for Fay's sake," he added, almost in a whisper.
I turned round upon him quickly.
"If I consent to have Frank Wildacre here, I shall not do it for Fay's sake," I said, "but for Christ's sake."
And as I uttered the three words which are the greatest lever of power, both human and Divine, which the world has ever known—those words whereby Man is permitted to control the Actions of even God Himself—I knew that at last the door had been opened to Him Who stood outside and knocked. Once again the Galilean had conquered.
I wrote to Isabel that I had changed my mind, and that I consented to have Frank at Restham for his convalescence: but I asked her to make it quite clear to him that I felt it as impossible now as I did two years ago to forgive him for having come between my wife and myself. I did not want to have him at the Manor on false pretences that everything was going to be smoothed over and made easy for him, as it had been always before: for even if such condoning of his fault had been possible on my part (which it was not), I knew him well enough to realise that it would be extremely bad for him.
The fiat had gone forth from the altar of Restham Church on the occasion of my marriage with Fay: "Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Frank had done his best to put asunder two Divinely united persons, and had succeeded. Therefore I felt it was but meet that he should be punished as he deserved. To be allowed to sin with impunity is the most terrible curse that can fall on the head of any man: and I had no intention of becoming the instrument whereby this curse should be directed to the head of Frank Wildacre.
Isabel sent him down to Restham in her car, and it was on a gloomy autumn day that he arrived. I met him at the door, and at the first moment was struck afresh by his marvellous likeness to Fay: it seemed almost as if my dead darling had come back to me, and for a second I was well-nigh unmanned. But after Jeavons had helped him in and laid him down on the large Chesterfield by the hall fire, I saw that he was not as much like Fay as I had at first thought. Both the Wildacres had always been slight and slender, but it was the slightness and slenderness of perfect health: now Frank's thinness amounted to positive emaciation, and his face was pinched and peaked. Moreover, he had lost that appearance of essential and eternal youth which had been so marked a characteristic of him and of Fay, and without which he hardly seemed a Wildacre at all.
But in one thing he was unchanged, and that was in his perfect ease of manner and absolute unself-consciousness. Although I could see that it required all his self-control to enable him to respond naturally to my greeting, as indeed it required all my self-control to give it, nevertheless he succeeded: and I could not help admiring the pluck and courage of the boy when I remembered how much lay between his departure from the Manor and his return to it.
As I recalled what bright and beautiful beings Wildacre and his children had been at one time, and realised that this broken wreck of a boy was all that was left of the once brilliant trio, a wave of misery at the pity of it all swept over my soul. I thought of Wildacre as he used to be in the old boyish days, and then of Frank and Fay when they first came to the Rectory after their father's death: and I felt that I was face to face with the hopeless tragedy of what might have been but was not, because the folly and sin of man frustrated the Wisdom and Righteousness of God, as for some hidden reason it has been permitted to do ever since the forbidden tree was planted in the midst of the garden.
And that is how the last of the Wildacres came to Restham.
For some days I saw but little of Frank. Ponty took him into her tender keeping and set about nursing him back to health, only allowing him to come downstairs and lie on the Chesterfield couch by the hall fire for a few hours every day. It was astonishing to me to find Ponty so good to Frank. She had always resented his presence at Restham even before he had worked any mischief there: yet now she took him into her charge, and nursed him as devotedly as if she had been his mother.
I remarked upon this change of front one day. "I am surprised you are so kind to Mr. Wildacre, Ponty, considering how angry you were when first I asked him to come and live at the Manor. I was afraid you wouldn't like his coming back in this way."
"Well, you see, Master Reggie, when I was that set against his coming to the Manor, he was strong and well, and so could stand up to me, as you might say: but now he is too weak and ill to hurt a fly. There's lots of folks as you can't stand at any price when they are able to stick up for themselves: but when they are knocked down you'd do anything you could to help them to get up again."
"Women are made like that—thank God!" I said.
"I remember there was a girl at Poppenhall who'd had a fine upstanding young man after her for years and years, and she couldn't so much as look at him, though all the other girls envied her for having such a handsome beau: but he lost an arm and got his face scarred in an accident down a coal-pit, and then she married him at once, and spent the rest of her life in looking after him and trying to take the place of his lost arm."
"A woman all over!" I remarked.
"And all the same, Master Reggie, I'm not such a woman as you seem to think—though I dare say I'm as weak as most of them if I'm taken the right way: but it was one thing to have Mr. Wildacre here when I felt it in my bones that he'd come between you and her dear young ladyship, and quite another to have him here when there is nobody to come between. It wasn't that I objected to Mr. Wildacre himself—far from it—any more than I objected to Miss Annabel, whom I'd had from a month old: but what I did say—and always shall say—is that it's best for married people to fight things out for themselves, without having any relations on either side to back them up. And I shall stick to this till my dying day, even if I was to hang for it!"
I had no intention of hanging my old nurse when she talked in this strain, but I had every objection to listening to her. So I closed the conversation by going out of the nursery.
Annabel came over to see Frank a few days after his arrival at Restham: but Ponty, who was paramount in the sick room, forbade her entrance. I had already perceived that my sister's despotic sway at the Manor was gradually being undermined, in secret and insidious ways, by the redoubtable Ponty, whenever a suitable opportunity presented itself.
"I'm not going to let Miss Annabel see Mr. Wildacre till he is stronger," my old nurse said: "she's no good in a sick room isn't Miss Annabel, being far too managing and interfering for invalids. And after all that poor young gentleman has gone through, it would be heathen cruelty to upset him still worse. Miss Annabel on the top of the Germans would be too much for anybody!"
"But Miss Annabel, as you call her, used to be so fond of Mr. Wildacre," I pleaded.
"Not after he crossed her will and ran off with her ladyship. You could put on the top of a threepenny-bit all Miss Annabel's love for them as don't do exactly as she tells them, and have room to spare. If she is as fond of Mr. Wildacre as she used to be, she can go on with it as soon as he is strong again, and able to stand her domineering ways; though there won't be much fondness to go on with, if I know Miss Annabel. But as long as he's ill, and in my charge, I can't have him bothered with nobody—not even with Deans and Chapters and all other dignities of the Church, including Miss Annabel. And so I tell you straight, Master Reggie."
And Ponty had her way, having found a secret supporter in my humble self.
As Frank under Ponty's care grew stronger, I saw more of him, and we gradually got into the way of talking naturally about my lost darling. He could not bear even yet to say much about his awful experiences during that terrible time at Louvain; but he repeated the story of how Fay had given her life to save another's after risking it for some time in order to tend the sick and wounded. And that made me love her all the more dearly, and mourn her all the more deeply.
"I don't want to bother you, Reggie," he said one day, when relations had grown less strained between us; "but I just want you to know how dreadfully sorry I am that I behaved as I did. Lady Chayford told me that you couldn't forgive me, and I feel I haven't the right to ask you to forgive me. But I just want to tell you that I am sorry, and that I would give my life to undo what I did."
He was lying in his usual place on the couch, and I was sitting in an easy-chair on the other side of the great fire-place. For a few seconds I smoked in silence: then I said: "I hope you understand it isn't that Iwon'tforgive you, Frank, but thatI can't. I've tried, and I find it impossible."
Frank nodded his head in the way that reminded me so keenly of Fay. "I know: Lady Chayford told me. And she also told me how not forgiving me had made you lose your wonderful gift of healing. It is dreadful to think that I had power to spoil your life as much as that!"
I smiled sadly at the childishness which made the loss of my healing powers seem greater than the loss of Fay. And then my smile faded as I realised that it is only when we speak as little children that we speak truth; for the loss of my healing powers stood sacramentally for more than even the loss of my wife. It was the outward and visible sign of my separation from God.
"I know it's no good saying I'm sorry now, but I must say it," Frank continued; "and I shall go on feeling it as long as I live. I don't really see how you could forgive me: I know I couldn't if I were in your place. In fact, I shouldn't even want to."